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Installation view, West gallery

 
 
 
 

Jackson and Sienna De Govia

Angel City Eats

December 10, 2011 – January 21, 2012

Opening Reception:

Saturday, December 10, 6-8pm

 

Gallery KM is pleased to present Angel City Eats, a multi-media installation created as a collaboration between father and daughter Jackson and Sienna De Govia. The exhibition explores two of Los Angeles’s most notorious obsessions—celebrity and food—and does so through dueling yet complimentary visions of Los Angeles as it has been represented in the popular lexicon: that of the 1950’s television show Dragnet, and that of contemporary Kardashian-dominated Reality TV. The exhibition features larger-than-life painted characters on cutout wood flats by Jackson, and Baroque-styled food sculptures by Sienna made from materials including glass, clay, metal, fabric, edible candy and cake. The sculptures and character paintings are combined to create tableaux that viewers are invited to move through and around as they navigate the exhibition space, as well as large wall-mounted pieces, including overlapping headshot portraits by Jackson and a rotating mechanical sculpture of diminutive kicking boots by Sienna. The gallery will hold a reception for the artists on December 10th, from 5-8pm, during which guests will be encouraged to consume several edible sculptures.
 

In Angel City Eats, two artists who have spent their careers constructing fantasies for public consumption utilize the tools of their trade to deconstruct and re-examine those fantasies. Jackson De Govia, production designer for iconic films such as Die Hard and The 40 Year Old Virgin, and Sienna De Govia, food stylist for print and television including reality shows like Grill It with Bobby Flay, take their personal perceptions and observations of our culture of consumption and turn them back on us, inviting us into a participatory experience of the City of Angels in two of its most memorable moments of simulation.

 

The exhibition space is divided into two rooms, each of which will be devoted to one of the two time periods. The main room of the gallery will be dominated by figure groups representing the caffeinated and nicotined 1950’s Los Angeles of Dragnet’s Joe Friday, and the smaller gallery room will be transformed into Kim Kardashian’s 21st century super-celebrity society. In the Dragnet room, we stand next to Joe Friday and his partner Ben Alexander in front of a locker overflowing with cascading fabric doughnuts, while in the room next door Kim Kardashian’s entourage, here called the Celebritards, sport Byzantine halos of candy delicacies and worship the glorified Kim—bursting naked from a crumpled wedding dress.

 

The sensory experience of Angel City Eats is purposefully overwhelming and hyper-saturated, meant to evoke an emotional response. Jackson’s prettily constructed figures instill a reaction in the viewer similar to that of a theme park—fantasy at its populace-numbing and entertaining best—and when combined with the ornate detail and candied excess of Sienna’s food sculptures, the effect is disorienting and revealingly saccharine. By inviting us into these scenes of crime, punishment and excess, the De Govia’s remind us both of the consistency of our desire for dramatic simulation, and our complicity in the fantasies we consume.

 

Jackson De Govia is an Emmy award winning production designer, with over four decades of experience in film, television, and theater. Sienna De Govia received a BFA in sculpture from the California College of Arts in Oakland in 1999, and works as a food stylist for print, television and film. This is their first professional artistic collaboration.

 

Download press release

  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery
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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery

    Jackson and Sienna De Govia
    Con Artist New Year’s, Three Drunks, Sustenance, and Ben Busted

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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery

    Jackson and Sienna De Govia
    Con Artist New Year’s, Three Drunks, Sustenance, and Ben Busted

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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery
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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery
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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery
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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery

    Jackson De Govia
    Con Artist New Year’s and Three Drunks
    2011

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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery

    Jackson and Sienna De Govia
    This is The City (with Incident in Cheap Motel, and Needs Tableau)

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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery

    Jackson and Sienna De Govia
    This is The City (with Incident in Cheap Motel, and Needs Tableau)

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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery
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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West Gallery

    Jackson and Sienna De Govia
    Lock Step and Evidence Desk

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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, West gallery
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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, East gallery
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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, East gallery

    Jackson and Sienna De Govia
    Edible Centerpiece, cupcakes, and Celebritard 3: Heidi

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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, East gallery
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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, East gallery

    Sienna De Govia
    Allegorical Deer Centerpiece
    2011
    Polymer, clay, metal, acrylic paint
    17 by 16 inches

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  • Angel City Eats Installation view, East gallery

    Jackson De Govia
    Celebritard 1: Paris
    2011
    Acrylic on birch plywood
    42 by 22 inches

    Sienna De Govia
    Bear Gloria
    2011
    Polymer, clay, metal, wood, plastic, acrylic paint, shellac
    20 by 4 by 20 inches

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  • Angel City Eats _MG_6664
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  • Angel City Eats Dragnet Con Artist New Year’s

    Jackson De Govia
    2011
    Acrylic on plywood
    35 by 60 inches

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  • Angel City Eats Dragnet Con Artist New Year’s (detail)
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  • Angel City Eats Three Smokers

    Jackson De Govia
    2011
    Acrylic on plywood
    35 by 54 inches

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  • Angel City Eats Sustenance

    Sienna De Govia
    2011
    Polymer, clay, metal, wood, acrylic paint, shellac
    55 by 47 inches

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  • Angel City Eats Sustenance (detail)
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  • Angel City Eats Dragnet Drunk

    Jackson De Govia
    2011
    Acrylic on plywood
    70 by 85 inches

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  • Angel City Eats Evidence Desk

    Sienna De Govia
    2011
    desk, chair, polymer, clay, metal, acrylic paint, shellac
    Evidence, Exhibit 1: Candy Gun, 7 by 2 by 5 inches
    Evidence, Exhibit 2: Pretzel Knuckles, 5 by 5 by 3.5 inches
    Evidence, Exhibit 3: Soft Serve Shank, 8.5 by 1 by 1.5 inches
    Evidence, Exhibit 4: Licorice Chain, 16 by 1 by 1 inches

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  • Angel City Eats Evidence Desk

    Sienna De Govia
    2011
    desk, chair, polymer, clay, metal, acrylic paint, shellac
    Evidence, Exhibit 1: Candy Gun, 7 by 2 by 5 inches
    Evidence, Exhibit 2: Pretzel Knuckles, 5 by 5 by 3.5 inches
    Evidence, Exhibit 3: Soft Serve Shank, 8.5 by 1 by 1.5 inches
    Evidence, Exhibit 4: Licorice Chain, 16 by 1 by 1 inches

    2248
  • Angel City Eats Ben Busted (detail) with Sinful Donuts

    Jackson and Sienna De Govia
    2011
    Acrylic on birch plywood, fabric, glass, beads, brass bbs
    5 by 2 by 5 inches per donut

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  • Angel City Eats Kim Greets

    Jackson De Govia
    2011
    Acrylic on birch plywood
    46 by 95 inches

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  • Angel City Eats Bear Gloria

    Sienna De Govia
    2011
    Polymer, clay, metal, wood, plastic, acrylic paint, shellac
    20 by 4 by 20 inches

    2275
  • Angel City Eats Allegorical Koi Centerpiece

    Sienna De Govia
    2011
    glass, polymer clay, metal, acrylic paint.
    14 by 14 by 12 inches

    794
  • Angel City Eats Sinful Donuts

    Sienna De Govia
    2011
    fabric, glass beads, brass bbs
    25 pieces, approximately 5 by 2 by 5 inches each

    799
  • Angel City Eats Camel Gloria

    Sienna De Govia
    2011
    polymer clay, metal, wood, plastic, acrylic paint, shellac
    20 by 4 by 20 inches

    795
  • Angel City Eats Evidence

    Sienna De Govia
    2011
    Polymer Clay, Metal, Acrylic Paint, Shellac
    16 by 16 inches

    797
  • Angel City Eats Elephant Gloria

    Sienna De Govia
    2011
    polymer clay, metal, wood, plastic, acrylic paint, shellac
    20 by 4 by 20 inches

    796
 
 

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